<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>Memoria in Loops by starmanspaceboy</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/30054639">Memoria in Loops</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/starmanspaceboy/pseuds/starmanspaceboy'>starmanspaceboy</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Good People Don't End Up Down Here [3]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Wolf 359 (Radio)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Emotional Abuse, Gen, Homophobia, Implied Physical Abuse, Parental Abuse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Canon, Religious Abuse, hera/maxwell is in there but it's not the focus of this fic, i promise i am a psychologist and not just pulling symptoms out my ass, maybe if i throw all my feelings at maxwell they wont be mine anymore, no one who stans maxwell had a good childhood ok, too many goddamn coding metaphors because i am also a big AI nerd with a cogsci background</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-03-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-03-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-15 16:30:48</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,020</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/30054639</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/starmanspaceboy/pseuds/starmanspaceboy</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Once a year, on the anniversary of finally leaving home, Maxwell is forced to relive the childhood she spends the rest of the year trying to forget. At least this time she's not alone for it. Set somewhere after the hostage situation. </p><p>(AKA the author got sad and then accidentally wrote inverse Memoria.)</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Hera &amp; Alana Maxwell</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Good People Don't End Up Down Here [3]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2271680</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>13</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Memoria in Loops</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>When she floats, staring up through the window at the endless sea of starlight above, she almost wonders if <em> that’s </em>why she left. If this was simply the furthest away one could be from everything that had ever… Everything that had ever hurt, she supposes. Everything that could ever hurt. She tips her head back, lets her eyes slide shut but the sleep doesn’t come, even now, even eight lightyears away and over a decade beyond. The hurt still festers just under the skin, like rot that rises to the surface once a year only to simmer back down in hibernation. </p><p>It hurts still, she realizes. </p><p>“I offered...when I offered you <em> that </em>, I’d always thought it’s what everyone wants,” Maxwell whispers into the vacuum of space. </p><p>The faintest whir joins the communal hum of the station. </p><p>“Still awake, Dr. Maxwell?” The freshly-woken words are sharp as they’ve been for weeks and Maxwell, to her credit, does not wince so much as deflate at the tone of them. She doesn’t have the energy to cut back, not tonight. </p><p>“Sleep is for the weak,” Maxwell replies pathetically. </p><p>Hera pauses and Maxwell can <em> hear </em>the freeze, unfreeze in her thoughts; little hitched noises as if Hera were about to speak but changed her mind just after the code had executed. The code loops over and over on itself, popping out the fragmented beginnings of a reply, a series of reconsidered conversations. Almost-fights, almost-condolences, almost-teases; like when people opened and closed their mouths too many times before settling on a reply. </p><p>The silence is awkward, painful, and much too close to home so Maxwell cuts through it again. </p><p>“I would have taken the opportunity to shed some shit if I were you.” </p><p>There’s a laugh, marked by small glitched pops, void of true humor. “Really? Do you have <em> any </em> fucking-”</p><p>“Yeah,” Maxwell cuts in. Her chest is tight with emotions a decade old and eight lightyears away. <em> Where am I going with this? </em> “I offered because <em> I </em> wanted that. <em> Want </em> that.” </p><p>There are no little noises this time, just the gentle whirring of the fan as Hera thinks quietly. Maxwell drops her head onto the top of the control panel, can only imagine it whirs just as quickly in that weird biochemical way human brains do.</p><p>“I would cut out <em> so </em> many memories.” The words tumble out before she can even really process what she’s saying. “Change them, at least. People said that’s what therapy is for but it never really feels like <em>carving them out</em>. I want to <em>carve them out. </em> Want to...to look back at that <em> kid </em> and not think of everything that <em> ruined </em> her.”</p><p>“Maxwell, I-”</p><p>“It’s fine.” Maxwell hiccups in a breath. “It’s gone. It’s been gone for years.”</p><p>She’s recited those words once a year for years. Years. It’s gotten to the point where she has to do the math in her head before conclusively providing a date. Growth, Maxwell supposes, in one way or another. “Twelve years. I left twelve years ago today.”</p><p>“Earth, or…?”</p><p>Maxwell shakes her head absently as she frowns up into the inky nothing and everything, watches the speckles of light swim about as the tears pool. “The house.” </p><p>She earns a tentative “ah” from the mother program. </p><p>“You know what it’s like to be the ‘bad kid’ when your parents are zealots?” The words settle in the cracks of the old beaten station. She glares at one in particular until her slow spin settles her vision back towards Hera’s visual sensors. “I was their punishment. A kid who wouldn’t shut up if her life depended on it. Who had <em>boy </em>hobbies. Who stopped breathing once because the car seat was itchy.”</p><p>“God. Reverend Maxwell made <em> fucking sure </em>no one saw his mistakes in public.” </p><p>She forces her eyes shut as if that would keep out the overwhelming rush of memories she desperately didn’t want. </p><p>
  <em> “God gave us roles and responsibilities,” Reverend Maxwell had said with foreboding calm. He rubbed the edge of his belt absently with his thumb and Alana, barely knee height, tried not to visibly recoil. She could still feel the pain of the clench of his hand around her arm even long after the redness had faded. “Mine is to raise a child that walks in the path of Christ. Yours is to be humble before God and before me. Am I understood?” </em>
</p><p>
  <em> She nodded quickly, staring at the lace of her socks.  </em>
</p><p>
  <em> “Am I understood?” he repeated, the tone more forced, the run of his thumb much more thoughtful now. She never knew if he actually wanted a response until she was on the precipice of too late.  </em>
</p><p>
  <em> “Understood, sir.” </em>
</p><p>The lack of gravity keeps the tears pooled just beyond her lids. “My achievements weren’t mine, they were theirs. My fuckups were all me, though,” Maxwell explains. </p><p>Another hitch of Hera’s voice, another loop of her coded thoughts begun and scrapped. </p><p>“They did to me what Pryce did to you.” She speaks aloud the deepest crevices of her chest as if she were simply reciting the findings of her latest publication. “It just takes longer to stick in humans.”</p><p>“One stone, lots of ripples,” Hera whispers.</p><p>There’s a long beat. </p><p>“Learned I was good at things I wasn’t supposed to be good at because one teacher at school brought me her old university calculus textbooks to work through during the lunch breaks. Got into coding so I could work around parental restraints and still contact the outside world when Reverend Maxwell decided I’d been too much of a brat. Had to keep friends from worrying because I’d disappeared from school for a few days.” </p><p>
  <em> She’d thought she’d hidden the floppy disks well. Alana had been cocky. Her father stood over her shoulder, watching as she silently wrote out one last letter to the first girl she'd ever loved.</em>
</p><p>
  <em> “‘I’ve decided to follow the path of righteousness and I hope you’ll decide to do the same',” he dictates to her. His thumb runs along the edge of his belt at the same speed that her hand runs across the page. “I want to see the letter before you seal it.” </em>
</p><p>
  <em> She hands the page over to Reverend Maxwell wordlessly. She knows she won’t get her disks back. If it stays at that - at just a few disks gone and a love lost - she’ll consider this confrontation a win of sorts. </em>
</p><p>She’d learned to build walkie-talkies from scrap that summer. Maxwell offers the sensor a half-assed smile.</p><p>“Got the offer from MIT, called my parents from a Boston payphone, and fucked off for good.” There’s a finality to the words, as if the story had ended there, as if that old Maxwell had ended with it.</p><p>The whir returns, predicts the words that come next. “I’m so sorry, Alana.”</p><p>“‘S fine.”</p><p>It’s not fine. It wouldn’t be fine until she could carve it out with her own bare hands. It wouldn’t be fine until she could hold in her hands the bleeding pieces of her mind where he still lived. His shouts, her winces, the bloom of pain under the pads of his fingers, his march up the stairs and her accompanying panic. Resected flesh in her hands before it gets sent to the lab for analysis and eventually entirely destroyed. Alana’s thumb picks over the edges of the long-faded scar on her lip. Absently, the way the Reverend thumbed at the edge of his belt. </p><p>“But I would kill to cut it out. Kill to pretend I was fucked because I did it to <em> myself </em>.”</p><p>Alana finally wipes at her eyes with the heel of her worn-out university hoodie. For what feels like the first time tonight, she truly pauses to contemplate her next words, feels the start and stop of looping code in her own head, biochemicals be damned. Adrenaline gone, the exhaustion catches up to settle in her bones. </p><p>She feels...ancient. Ancient in that way that only kids who learned to lie through their teeth for safety truly feel. But it’s only been twelve years. Twelve years back and eight lightyears away. The zero-g rotation returns her to her original position, staring out into a nothingness that suddenly feels too small.</p><p>“You’re you because of your memories but sometimes I feel like I’m less of me because of mine,” Alana explains to the soft whir that has now become a constant. “I became <em> stronger </em> when I started pretending mine didn’t exist.”</p><p>“So that thing you did, with me,” Hera starts, pauses. The whir picks up in frequency for a moment before she continues. “That was-”</p><p>“Years of therapy.” There’s a half-laugh in Alana’s throat, but it’s as hollow as the ship. “Over a <em> decade </em> of therapy,” she corrects.</p><p>She can practically hear Hera nodding in her own head. </p><p>“It worked, I guess,” Alana says. “His voice in my head is quieter now. But once a year I…”</p><p>“Once a year it comes back?” Hera offers. </p><p>“Once a year it’s just sixteen-year-old me at a payphone in August cutting myself open for them one last time, just in my own head now.”</p><p>“For the <em>last </em>time. They’re gone now, <em> you’re </em>gone now. And maybe it has been twelve years but you spent more time than that putting up with them. Alana, you’re...you’re allowed to <em> feel </em>that, you know?” There’s no loop this time, no popping noises. Even the whir has gone down to a barely-audible hum. Hera speaks with the sort of absolute clarity that even Alana hadn’t thought she could manage.</p><p>“And, for what it’s worth, you got better, didn’t you?”</p><p>Alana sighs, feels the whirring in her own head. </p><p>
  <em> The quarters drop with a clink into the machine, a bit too loud. She’s trying not to cry. Trying not to think about how this should have gone. The thick emotion in her throat remains no matter how much she tries to tell herself she doesn’t care.  </em>
</p><p>
  <em> She doesn’t care, not for them. She cares because somewhere in the bile that churns her stomach she knows she probably deserved better.  </em>
</p><p>
  <em> The receiver goes quiet and, then- </em>
</p><p>
  <em> “Alana, dear, where have you been?”  </em>
</p><p>
  <em> Dear. She’d only ever been ‘dear’ when her mother had wanted something of her.  </em>
</p><p>
  <em> “Please listen, because I’m not going to repeat myself,” Maxwell says, measured confidence gained only through six hours of mental loops, repeated over and over again from takeoff to landing. “I took the offer from MIT. I’m not going home.” </em>
</p><p>
  <em> The too-warm metal of the phone cord has found itself tangled between her fingers as she takes a breath. “It’s your fault. Both of you. Both of you and God, I guess. So if you want someone to blame for my sins or whatever, there you go.” </em>
</p><p>
  <em> And then, unrehearsed, barely heard over the bustle of late-season tourists, “I’m sorry.”  </em>
</p><p>
  <em> She’s not sure what she’s sorry for. Not for leaving, no. For being a bad kid, she supposes. Maxwell returns the phone to its cradle, sucks a breath in through her teeth, and steps out of the phone booth without crying. </em>
</p><p>She’s not that kid anymore, she supposes, sixteen and staring down the damning barrel of her own choices. </p><p><em> Their </em>choices, she corrects. There are no bad kids, just shitty parents. </p><p>“I guess. Technically.” </p><p>Their choices, made twelve years ago, eight lightyears away. Choices she still gets to cry over, here in the quiet darkness with an AI - a friend - she likes to pretend she saved. Because she has Jacobi and Hera and Kepler and, maybe, she might even have the rest of the crew too. But it’s not quite the same. </p><p>She’s not quite the same either. </p><p>“Thank you, Hera.”</p><p>“You’re welcome, Alana.” </p><p>The loops in her head finally reach the break command and Alana takes a breath as if for the first time all night. It’s all over, quiet again even if just for the year, and this time when she pulls herself along the length of the tin can that has become a home, she lets the tears collect in the corners of her eyes.</p>
  </div></div>
</body>
</html>